The Power Of Small Persistent Actions (Or How to Get Shit Done)

It took me well over 2 months to design this site. And by two months, I mean every single day of the 2 months.

Every day, I’d take one small action; tweak this, edit this, add this section, make this pop with some CSS; it was one simple step at a time.

Now if you know me well enough, you’ll know that this is against my very nature.

I’m not a consistent person, I’m not patient, I’m super impulsive. I like to dive in first before thinking it over and when I dive in it is with a fire-in-my-ass approach. Not that anyone is pursuing me of course.

My focus is always to get it done in one fell swoop before I lose interest. The irony is, I always did lose interest, fire-in-my-ass notwithstanding.

Over the years, I’ve conceived a lot of ideas and started to implement some. And each of them is nothing now but an abandoned project.

Clearly, even though this was my default approach, I know I needed to change it. It has gotten me somewhere, but nowhere close to where I’d like to be.

But boy was it hard adjusting. At first, I felt compelled to work the way I was used to. I felt the pressure to overwork myself, as usual, to focus on the result, not the process. I felt the stroke of every second passing, telling me with urgency “you’re getting out of time”.

But I resisted, I diverted my restless energy elsewhere.

I tried focussing on the long term. I relaxed: no more deadlines.

I began to savour the process, to revel in my own procrastination. I gave my perfectionism a free reign.

And today, we’re here. We did get here.

Through it all, I’ve learned the tremendous power of small persistent actions. I’ve learned the virtue of patience and the liberation that comes with showing up every day.

Most importantly, I’ve discovered how to get shit done. No more abandoned projects littered all over the place, amen.

If you’re anything like me, with many ideas and a terrible means of getting them done, perhaps you’ll be inspired by this.